Weekend update

I went away for a weekend retreat these past few days. I figured I would coil Friday and coil Sunday and only miss one day.

Ha!

I came back so exhausted from travel and from trying to keep up with healthy (and healthy-ish) people who thought the weekend was low-key and sedentary, that I’ve been plastered to the bed or couch-bed since I got home. The stairs are what made me overdo it. There have been a few times this autumn and early winter, in the wake of Rocephin that I didn’t find stairs challenging. That wonderful effect has worn off. Now I’ve got to kill a lot of Lyme bacteria before I get back to that lovely capacity.

I didn’t Herx too badly on Friday. Mostly I ended up with a headache and I was very tired. I was happy to see a bunch of people I know, so I distracted myself from the body pain as best I could. The only problem is that I was overstimulated (think of a small child who had a busy day) and I couldn’t settle in to sleep too well.

Babesia Hands

Saturday, I paid a lot of attention to my hands. My right hand (the one I treated for Bartonella) hurt a lot of the day, mostly bone pain in my fingers and wrist, some muscle pain in my forearm and hand. My left hand (the one I treated for Babesia) felt a lot better than usual, but I had a few acute spells of sharp pain in my wrist and the knuckles of my index finger. The same pattern continued on Sunday. I decided to quit the differential experiment and coil both hands for Babesia. I planned to do it last night, but didn’t have the energy to pull out the coil machine until this afternoon. Monday is generally a good day to start new things.

Coiling both hands for Babesia, I’m using a different technique. When I did one hand at a time, I placed the coil flat on the bed and put my hand over it, like I was serving my hand for dinner. I made sure to keep my other hand and my body away, so I stood at an awkward angle about a foot away. Now that I’m doing both hands, I kneel in front of my bed, coil flat on top. Then I wrap my hands and forearms around the outside of the coil. Think of those new-age pictures of a two hands holding an orb between them. Something like that. Then I stretch myself as far away as I can so I don’t get the coil near my head or chest. I did both hands for one minute. The goal is to do it long enough to make a dent in the infection, but not so long that all the toxins build up and make the symptoms worse while my body cleans up the carnage.

Babesia Feet and Lyme Shoulders

While I was at it, I coiled my feet for Babesia. That wasn’t my intention when I started, but I was too tired to think straight. I wanted to perform a similar experiment on my feet- 1 foot Babesia, 1 foot Bartonella. Instead, my brain either short circuited or tried to tell me something while circumventing the logical decision making structure, and I stuck both feet through the middle of the coil on the Babesia frequency. If my feet don’t hurt, or hurt way less, tomorrow morning, I’ll consider this a victory. Otherwise, I’ll go back to my experiment.

I’ve done more with the coil machine today. Since the major joints are the ones that Lyme bacteria most love to live in, I coiled my shoulders for Lyme today, one minute on each side. It’s a bit tricky though. First and foremost, earplugs are required, which I used. The sound from air vibrations is pretty loud when the coil is close to the ear. Second, the coil emits waves that can penetrate (I think for my machine) up to 6″-8″ of human tissue at an intensity sufficient to have an effect. So I ended up coiling my neck and jaw when I hung the coil off my shoulder, along with the hand that kept it in place, and 6″ into my chest cavity and part of my head. I’m a bit concerned about getting a big Herx reaction. First because my heart started pounding and my chest felt tight when I did my left side. And second because I always have a lot of pain in my neck, and often in my shoulders and jaw and ears.

In the few hours since then, I’ve had a bout of double vision that lasted about 2 minutes. The floaters in my eyes today are high density. I’m a bit worried. I’m too tired to do much besides rest. Not up for a bath. So I’m hoping I can detox sufficiently to be okay tomorrow.

Weekend Report

Back to my weekend report: Saturday I was doing okay with a lot of joint aches, but not overwhelmed by the pain for the first half of the day. My jaw and shoulder were popping and crackling frequently. My sweat was especially putrid. I know it’s gross to say that, but I firmly believe it’s way better for that stuff to be outside my body rather than in it gumming up the works. (My urine smelled funny, too, like turkey soup!) By evening, I was ready to lie down for the night. The fatigue was catching up to me and I had a headache that was made worse by the fluorescent lighting. I was feeling overheated in my body but cold in my limbs. A kind friend lent me a woolen hat with a brim that when pulled down reduced the amount of light directly from the fluorescent bulbs in my eyes. It kept the headache from getting out of control while I stayed up way past my body’s done point for the day. I’m never quite sure what to do in those moments. Some weekends, I’ve trotted off to bed early. This time I stuck around because I wanted to be with people. I paid the price later, or a downpayment anyway, when I couldn’t calm down enough to sleep. (Laughing hard with my roommates for a while helped, because when we stopped, I didn’t fret about not sleeping, I just relaxed into my pain to wait for the sandman.) I paid the full price the next morning.

Sunday was hard. I skipped the morning activities and got up at 9:15. I took a long hot shower, hoping to warm up my back and hips enough to negotiate the stairs to the main meeting room. It worked well enough to get me down the stairs, but I was hurting everywhere. I found myself constantly distracted by pains in different parts all over my body, from my eyes to my toes to my hips to my index fingers to my elbows to my back to my jaw and on and on.

On the way out of the main meeting, someone gave me an exuberant hug, crushing my ribs and lifting my off my feet. I let out something short of a holler and accepted a quick apology. I want people to be that excited to see me and to be able to show it. I just couldn’t take the tight squeeze. I have recurring pain in my rib cage, usually a few bones or joints at a time. This time, it was off the charts and in large sections in the front and back. OUCH!

I had a good 15-minute cry after that (with some other folks who wouldn’t feel guilty for having accidentally hurt me). Real tears, real sobs, real pain and real release. Crying is a good response to pain (in my book). It doesn’t necessarily relieve the pain, but it does make it possible to bear it. I sometimes like to think I’m not in chronic pain because I can tell that it doesn’t always hurt. Early on, a doctor warned me that if I didn’t take drugs to interrupt the neurological pain, it would become chronic and would keep hurting after the “injury” had healed. Maybe that happens. But his solution was for me to take his drug for the rest of my life. Whatever. I’d rather be in pain on and off, that’s how I know if I’m overdoing it, if I’m killing off the infection, or if I’ve sufficiently detoxed the previous round of infection-fighting. So anyway, I cried and hurt, shooting pains from my ribs down my back, for the rest of the day. Today I woke up without rib pain. I was back to the hand and foot pain and the kind of fatigue that makes me feel as mobile as a bookcase built into a wall.

Sunday was rough. Lots of digestive upset. Lots of pain in my back and ribs. Low level headache. It took me a while after I got home to lie down long enough to be able to get up and eat dinner (thanks, Mom, for cooking!). I did manage to watch last week’s Castle episode. It only took a week for me to get to it…

My juicer came on Thursday night. I haven’t opened it yet. I thought it was coming at the end of this week (which is why I never pay for expedited shipping) when I would have the energy to jump into playing with it. At this point, I’m hoping to unpack it on Tuesday or Wednesday. I need to straighten out and rearrange a few things in the kitchen so I can put it somewhere accessible for regular use. I keep staring at the box wishing it was already set up.

Now, at ten minutes to four, I think I have enough energy to stand for five minutes and take a shower. Body brushing will have to wait till tomorrow because my skin feels sensitive already. Then food or something. We’ll see how far I get.

Feeling the love

Thank you to everyone who has commented, emailed, called or sent me a card. It means a lot that you’re reading my words and accompanying me on this journey.